Veterans' hopes of saving USS Saratoga scuttled

May. 27, 2014 - 10:13AM
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Former Navy sailors and New Yorkers with an attachment to the USS Saratoga (shown in 1992) say they're saddened by the news that the mothballed aircraft carrier will be scrapped instead of converted into a floating museum. (PH3 Bruce W. Moore / Navy)

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Former Navy sailors and New Yorkers with an attachment to the USS Saratoga say they’re saddened by the news that the mothballed aircraft carrier will be scrapped instead of converted into a floating museum.

The Navy announced earlier this month that the carrier would be sold to a Texas scrap company for a penny. The ship will be towed from its pier near Newport, Rhode Island to Texas, where it will be dismantled and sold for scrap.

Brad Senter is president of the USS Saratoga Association, the alumni group of those who served aboard the carrier between its launching in 1955 and decommissioning in 1994. He tells the Daily Gazette of Schenectady that former Saratoga sailors are saddened by the news, but they knew it was coming.